preview

Comparing Theogony And Genesis By Hesiod

Decent Essays

A popular topic of debate over the course of history is how the world came to be and how humankind began to live here on earth. Many civilizations, both ancient and modern, have their own views on how creation occurred and where it stemmed from. Two popular texts, the Theogony, written by Hesiod, and the book of Genesis of the bible, are two of the more widely known myths that are written to explain the origins of life. The book of Genesis talks about in depth the process in which the earth and life were created and the progression of how the world was populated, while the Theogony, written by Hesiod, is a book that discusses the genealogy and the creation of Gods and Goddesses in the areas of ancient Greece. Though both of these books may discuss the same general topics of creations and the nature of the divine, there …show more content…

Both the Theogony and Genesis portray a back and forth relationship between man and nature in the two myths. In Genesis, there are two different versions of the creation of man and both of them are full of positive undertones with nature. In Genesis 1, God spends five of his seven days creating nature in its numerous forms, such as water, grass, trees, fruit, and wildlife. Each day of creation ends with the idiom, “and God saw it was good” (Genesis 39), emphasizing the positive feelings toward nature felt by the Hebrews. The importance of nature to the Hebrews becomes even clearer in Genesis 2, where God fashions “the human, humus, from the soil” (Genesis 40). Here humans not only are given rights to nature, they are born from it. However, not everything about nature in Genesis has positive connotations. Later in the creation myth nature, specifically the apple in the Garden of Eden, is responsible for the downfall of man after Eve is pressured into eating it by the devil in an alternate

Get Access